Safari Style
Shake Up Your Safari!
Imvelo Safari Lodges offer four special camps in and around Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe— welcoming creature comforts combine with the luxury of exclusivity, remote places, small intimate camps, and authentic interactions with nature and local people. We believe in enriching the lives of those who live around us as well as our guests. We aim to ensure that the local communities and wildlife benefit directly from you, our visitors.
This is where we excel.
Game Drives
Join experienced guides in traditional open safari vehicles. On your morning game drives pause to enjoy tea, coffee, and biscuits and in the afternoons cool drinks and savory snacks will be provided. Our game viewing vehicles seat 6 in the back so everyone gets a comfortable window seat. Our game drives in this remote portion of Hwange National Park seldom see another vehicle and are a spectacular insight into the wildlife and environment unique to this part of the park.
*All Camps
Walking Safaris
Game walks are best enjoyed in the morning and always in the company of a fully licensed and highly experienced armed professional guide. In this remote and wild area every walk provides fascinating insights into Hwange’s circle of life; watch elephants shake acacia trees to loosen and eat the pods, peek at dung beetles as they roll up the elephant dung containing acacia seeds into balls, bury these balls, and the acacia seed is now ready to germinate and grow into a new tree! Great for photography!
*All Camps
Night Drives
Engage all your senses on a night drive through our private concession. Our trackers operate powerful spotlights to seek out some of the less-seen nocturnal creatures. The light’s red filter lessens the disturbance, thus creating a unique opportunity to watch the fascinating behavior of the nocturnal world. Unusual highlights include antbears, porcupines, genets, springhares, lesser bushbabies, and pennant winged nightjars.
*Bomani, Camelthorn + Nehimba
Look Up Hide
A modified steel shipping container (including a flush loo!) is sunk deep into the Hwange sands, creating a cool, secure place to watch wildlife coming to drink. The toe-level experience with elephants is a thrill and allows for amazing photography. Exclusively at Jozibanini, and nowhere else in the National Park, spend a moonlit evening watching wildlife against a backdrop of stars in a crystal clear sky.
*Bomani, Camelthorn + Jozibanini
Pump Run
A unique all day game drive for the love of wildlife. Visit wateholes to deliver supplies and rations and enjoy a safari along the way. With no major rivers, wildlife has subsisted on drilled water (originally pumped by windmills and now by diesel engines) for the past 70 years during Hwange's dry seasons. We are responsible for 15 pumped waterholes. This means Imvelo is looking after approximately 20- 25% of the waterholes that sustain Hwange's wildlife—a huge commitment of which we are truly proud!
*Bomani, Camelthorn + Jozibanini
**Dry season only (June – October)
Community Visit
Our guests can enjoy an un-orchestrated look at village life in rural Matabeleland. Hosted by one of Imvelo’s local guides, it is a fascinating tour of a variety of typical daily village activities and a visit to one of the nearby schools, hosted by the headmaster, where guests may be treated to traditional songs sung by the children and enjoy a ‘class interaction’. A great opportunity encouraged by our teachers—for both the children and our guests it is always a heart-warming and inspirational morning.
*Bomani, Camelthorn + Jozibanini
**School visit when in session or by special arrangement.
Rhino Sanctuary
We have re-introduced white rhino to Hwange. Seize the chance to see the Big 5 here—a momentous achievement for the park and for our future guests! Tour the sanctuary headquarters and meet the Community Wildlife Protection scouts on duty that day. Spend time on foot with the rhino and our Cobra Rangers guarding them 24/7 – lots of photo opportunities and quality time to watch and enjoy our white rhino in their new home on the Ngamo plains.
*Bomani + Camelthorn
**$150 community and rhino conservation levy is paid by each guest at Bomani and Camelthorn.
Elephant Express
The Elephant Express is our unique railcar, ingeniously designed to offer guests an unforgettable experience while transferring to and from our camps in southern Hwange. With seating at teak tables for up to 22 passengers, a spacious aisle allows for movement to get that perfect photograph, and there is even a loo on board. Refreshments are served during the three-hour journey, including a light lunch on the afternoon southbound trip. Sit back, relax, and enjoy great game viewing and a whole load of fun!
*Bomani + Camelthorn
Mountain Biking
At Imvelo’s remote adventure camp, Jozibanini, guests can explore the area on mountain bikes! For millennia sand from the Kalahari has blown and piled into small dunes in this area. In between these dunes are hard-packed game trails that elephants and other wildlife use to transit the area—and they’re great for mountain bikes! Look out for wildlife and enjoy a bush lunch under a shady Acacia tree. Completely flexible and there is always a vehicle available for support and refreshments!
*Jozibanini
Pop-Up Spa
Imvelo’s ethos is to enrich the lives of those who live around us as well as our guests. We’re pleased to offer a pop-up spa experience provided by beauty therapists from the surrounding community. Trained locally, they provide authentic Zimbabwean treatments in the most spectacular settings (or in guest rooms). Not only do guests enjoy a touch of pampering, but they are also giving back to the local community. There is nothing like a good head and neck massage after a day on safari!
*Camelthorn + Bomani
**Additional cost for pop-up spa
Canoeing
Canoeing in Ngamo’s seasonal wetlands is innovative and oh-so-much-fun! Slip quietly along and capture great wildlife sightings as game grazes on the drier patches of land nearby. Our fleet of hard rubber inflatable canoes are safe and stable and provide an awesome way to take advantage of Hwange’s green season and an incredible opportunity to get close up with wildlife. This activity is dependent on the season’s rainfall.
*Bomani + Camelthorn
Family Fun
Imvelo’s camps and lodges, and especially the guides, are a standing favorite for families on safari. With so many activity options and an opportunity to burn off energy, kids just love it! Become a junior ranger for a day, feel an elephant sneeze on you from above in the look up hide, have a pick-up football game in the village, walk with rhinos (!), ride the Elephant Express, gaze at the southern sky at night, know you are actively taking part in conservation! Let us help you plan all the fun!
*All Camps
**We welcome children 7+. Special arrangements may be made for less than 7 yrs old.
Sundowners
A safari tradition that only gets better with time! We’re quite serious about our sundowners and make sure guests are in the right place at the right time every day at sunset—cocktails and canapes, spectacular vistas, and the beautiful glow of the sunset over Hwange National Park. Each camp has favored spots to share and more often than not, the wildlife tends to agree with our choices! The only way to cap off a perfect day.
*All Camps
Nehimba Seeps
Nehimba Seeps is a specially designated conservation area and one of the only year-round, naturally occurring water supplies in the massive Hwange National Park. The seep is an ancient source of surface water that was once used by the San Bushmen. Today the area is frequented by elephants, who can be found digging for minerals as well as enjoying the water. It is especially spectacular at sunset!
*Nehimba
Birding
Birding in Hwange National Park is fantastic as its most important and impressive factor is the variety of closely knit habitats and the diversity of birdlife this encourages. Acacia woodlands, Kalahari sandveld, palm savannah, flooded wetlands, and open grasslands beckon myriad species. The arrival of the rains creates an awesome spectacle for any naturalist, but for a birder is staggering—hundreds of eagles, huge flocks of mixed storks, and clouds of bee-eaters.
*All Camps
Bush Dining
The chefs at Imvelo Safari Lodges are artists in their own right and the creative meals served in the camps are an integral part of the experience, and so are the locales—along the family-style table at Camelthorn, fireside at Bomani, in the presence of elephants at Nehimba, and under the vast milky way at Jozi, and surprise meals in the bush at each. We love to take it a step further and celebrate guests with memorable private dining experiences—contact us to plan a special surprise!
*All Camps
Volunteering
We’ve planned and hosted many volunteer and fundraising safaris for groups big and small over the years-from painting classrooms to commissioning a new borehole at a parched village. Education, healthcare, and water for people and wildlife are three areas where there will always be a desperate need. We love to get creative in helping design impactful itineraries that are meaningful to all involved.
*All Camps
*Additional costs may be associated with custom requests.
Sleep Out
With exceedingly dark nights (apart from full moons!) and an incredible display of the Southern sky, many guests are drawn to sleep out. One of our camps allow for this incredible experience — on a roll out bed on the raised deck at Jozibanini. Sleeping out under the African sky is an experience you’ll never forget and waking to bird chatter and first light over the bush is invigorating and uplifting.
*Jozibanini
